Yelloway 2927 DK - 1 Jun 1968 (Photo by Gerard Duffy)

Saturday 1 June 1968 - Yelloway 2927 DK seen when working the first run of the Rochdale to Barry Island holiday express service jointly licenced with Associated Motorways. This photograph, taken by my old friend the late Gerard Duffy, shows the coach during the refreshment stop on the M5 motorway at Strensham Services I believe. Gerard, a finance man who worked in the Yelloway General Office, was day off today and rode on this inaugural service as a passenger with the two rostered drivers - there were no paying passengers though.

For the first season the service was worked by a Yelloway vehicle operating down and back in the same day with two drivers but the format was changed in subsequent years to accommodate the new drivers hours regulations and to give returning passengers a morning departure time from Barry Island rather than a mid-afternoon departure. Under the revised schedule a Yelloway coach would leave Rochdale for Cheltenham on Friday morning and go forward to Cardiff on hire to Associated Motorways so that on Saturday it could work the through express from Barry Island to Rochdale. The Saturday day south express from Rochdale to Barry Island was worked by a Red & White coach which had travelled from South Wales to Rochdale via Cheltenham on the Friday initially on an Associated Motorways service then on hire to Yelloway from Cheltenham to Rochdale.

The coach, a Harrington Cavalier bodied AEC Reliance, was new in 1962 - one of the first batch of 36 feet long coaches to enter the fleet. This was the last year that coaches with opening windows entered the fleet as subsequent coaches had forced air ventilation.